Congratulations to women and women’s rights supporters everywhere on this International Women’s Day! Today we should be celebrating the women’s rights campaigners in Sudan who have been steadfast in their struggles against the regime’s constant repression. Unfortunately the only achievement was for women in South Sudan, which became a new country this year. The women there can celebrate the achievement of the country’s committing itself to international conventions of women’s rights.

But we should also celebrate the courage of the women of the Nuba mountains, who are being forced to hide their children in caves, and live as though they are in the stone age to avoid the government’s air bombing, in its continued conflict with the rebels.

Sadly, it is not only women in conflict zones who are victims in Sudan. The so-called sharia laws allow women to be lashed by whips made from rhinoceros hides. These are doled out for reasons such as dancing in mixed company. Yet Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the war crimes tribunal himself dances with women – but the sharia law he implemented is not used on him.